I know it's really cool it's 325 oh
hello
sorry I was just telling a friend here
blah blah blah this is so dumb
okay so let me just start by explaining
what's in the ground that we're gonna be
dealing with while drilling the well so
we have bedrock that's deep down that's
where we ultimately want to get to but
on top of that is a certain amount of
what you call overburden overburden is
clay and sand and and gravel and
boulders and water that's sitting on top
of the bedrock now in some areas you'll
see bedrock outcropping right on the
surface and there is no overburden at
all where you see that in other areas
there'll be hundreds of feet of
overburden it really depends on
geological processes that I really
couldn't tell you much about so you got
to get through that overburden and down
to bedrock and that can be a variety of
different types of rock in my case that
happened to be shale so in order to get
down to that water you got to drill
through the overburden into the bedrock
and hit water and you know in my mind
this whole thing before we even started
I found this to be completely amazing
because deep down inside under the
ground like that that is like unknown
territory it's like it's like a frontier
it's like alien almost it's like going
down to the bottom of the ocean I mean
we don't you can't just go down to the
ground I mean there's all kinds of
organisms and all kinds of things that
like you know are totally foreign to us
down there I imagine
so I got really excited about the whole
thing and when talking to different well
drillers they started telling me all
different stories like one of the
coolest ones is when sometimes when
they're drilling they'll actually all of
a sudden the drill just goes just drops
and a reason for that is because you can
hit a cave
they have hit caves that like are not
accessible from the outside world
they're completely uncharted there no
one has ever been in them before and now
we just broke a hole into him and you
know it just boggles the mind like you
know what does that look like so there
are two main types well really there's
one main type of drilling that's done
around release around here these days
and that is a rotary drilling machine
this is a giant machine on a truck it's
diesel-powered and it has a hydraulic
giant hydraulic pump on it and what it's
doing is its it's a basically like a
giant hammer drill if you're familiar
with like a Dewalt hammer drill you
might buy at Home Depot it's spinning
but as you apply pressure to the drill
bit pushing up it starts hammering like
hammering down with the idea is its
fracturing the masonry that you're
drilling into or the rock that you're
drilling into and that is the exact same
thing that's going on with the with the
rotary drilling machine so another
method that's still used around here
although a lot less used is the cable
tool and that is basically instead of a
rotary motion it's literally just a big
drill bit that is just lifting up and
then slamming down and a pound per pound
pounding into the earth and fracturing
up that rock we definitely gave each a
lot of consideration and I'm gonna cover
that in another video but we ended up
choosing the common method nowadays it
is the rotary drilling machine so this
machine arrives on a truck it's got a
support truck that's filled with a
couple thousand gallons of water and
this machine has a giant boom on it that
lifts up in the air it's got a drilling
head up on that boom that travels up and
down about 20 feet and that is the head
that is spinning and that is hammering
and then that's all hydraulic powered to
get started they get the machine all
levelled out so it's got these feet that
come down and level out the machine
because
the machine is not level you're not
gonna drill a straight hole down into
the ground it's gonna be angled in
whatever angle the machine is at so once
it gets leveled out they start the
process by attaching the drill bit which
is like this giant like Tri wheeled
grinding tool so these little grinding
heads I believe they spin and the the
drill head that the drill bit actually
has holes in the init that shoot out
water and compressed air and I'm gonna
get to that in a little bit so machine
starts drilling it sends down a 20-foot
lengths of pipe once it gets there a
little collar is secured around the end
of that 20 foot shaft to hold it from
falling into the hole and then the the
drilling head the power head rises up 20
feet and then there is a spindle that
swings over and drops off another 20
foot shaft and is attached to the power
head that comes down to the previous
twenty foot shaft and then it spins and
threads it into the previous one and
then it goes down another 20 feet locks
in the pipe around the collar and then
power head rises back up 20 feet and
again and again and again until you hit
bedrock
once you hit bedrock that's when the
casing comes in so the casing is a six
inch steel pipe that keeps all the
overburden from falling in the hole it's
necessary because the overburden is it's
sand and dirt and mud and all these and
gravel and that can just fall collapse
and fall to fill up this hole so we need
something to keep all that stuff out so
we grab a piece of a 20 foot length of
steel pipe and basically it's a very
similar process to the drilling the same
mechanism grabs it spins it pushes it
into the ground so each 20 foot length
of casing has threaded ends so one side
is male the other side is female so when
they're connecting each of those lengths
it they spin the top one onto the one
that's the previous one that's already
in the ground and they thread it in
makes a tight connection then he comes
back and arc welds it completely
together because think about it
you might have to go down you know maybe
you're lucky you only have to go down
forty to eighty feet into overburden or
maybe you're not lucky and you have to
go down you know 100 200 maybe even 300
feet of overburden before you get to the
bedrock the spinning action that's
pushing that that casing down there's a
lot of friction against the side is that
of the hole the drilled hole against the
overburden and you don't want to
compromise those connections so by
welding it by threading it and welding
it you're making a super-strong shaft
that just is not gonna compromise as
you're pushing that casing down the very
first section of pipe that goes in they
attach a drive shoot to it so I guess
that's like a I know if it's hardened
but it's definitely like a thick piece
of steel that just threads onto the
bottom of that pipe and the point of it
is is that once you get down to bedrock
with the casing all the way down
basically what they turn on the the
hammer drill portion of the power head
and it actually just literally drills
pounds and drills that that drives you
and thus the whole casing into the
bedrock about eight to ten feet that
drives you if you did that with just
casing it would probably break up the
steel but the drive shoe is super strong
so it's able to keep everything intact
while that's happening so now we're 8/10
feet into the bedrock so we're locked in
all that overburden can't get into the
casing now because we come out of the
surface so nothing's gonna fall on the
top and we're in the bedrock on the
bottom so we're sealed
we're sealed as far as the overburden
goes next thing you got to do is is
actually seal the outside around the
outside of the casing into the bedrock
the hole that's being drilled for the
casing is 2 inches bigger diameter than
the casing itself so that is what's
creating is approximately like you know
half an inch to an inch on each side gap
that we need to fill up because what we
don't want is surface water ultimately
making its way down through or really
contaminated surface water which is
possible because we are humans and we
make a mess of things may it working its
way down around the outsides of the
casing and thus into the bedrock
contaminating the water supply so
they've put in something called grout
that is in my case they use a bentonite
clay the powder like cement is and they
literally just dumped it in and then you
know water will mix with it and there's
moisture down there and it will harden
and totally seal up that the outside of
that casing I've seen some other cases
where like they're purposely putting in
more material to come up all the way to
the surface my well driller said that a
lot of the debris that comes out of the
top of the casing as we're drilling into
bedrock will fall in and fill the rest
of the gap between the casing and the
overburden in my case it turned out I
had about a hundred and eighty feet of
overburden before we hit bedrock the
first 15 feet was some big boulders and
it was gravel and a little bit of clay
silty stuff but then it just turned into
like solid clay
the nice thing about that is that clay
is not very permeable it basically since
it's just like muck it like boozed right
in and suctioned itself to the sides of
the casing which is good because that's
gonna help keep any kind of surface
contamination from working its way down
to ground water or even alongside the
casing so in addition to the grout that
the fact that I had like a hundred and
whatever was sixty five feet of just
mucky clay is gonna seriously help keep
any surface water contamination from
ever getting down there
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so with with a rotary drill you know
you've hit water when literally water
just erupts out of the hole it was
pretty violent actually you got all that
compressed air blowing all the debris
and all the water used for drilling and
cooling the bit and all that up out of
that hole and you see that coming up
it's you know it's not too much it's
pretty consistent just a spray that's
coming up but when we hit water man holy
cow it just blew right out of there
gushing it almost if you're standing in
the right place you would have got
knocked over
that is when we knew it was time to stop
and assess the situation and I ended up
with about 10 gallons a minute of flow
in the end all right so after you got
your hole drilled your casing in and
your your drilled all the way down to
the bedrock and developed a good amount
of water flowing into you into your well
it's time to drop the pump in so I think
they took in shot diameter PVC and
threaded it into the top of a 220 volt
and Peller pump and meant for Wells and
out right down on the bottom of that PVC
right above the pump they got this blue
thing look like rubber and I didn't ask
but I believe it was to push against the
sides of the casing or the bedrock
wherever they dropped it and it's to
keep the the pump centered in the pipe
could be wrong on that so if I'm wrong
please correct I imagine when the pump
goes on it's pretty powerful pump so
it's probably gonna want to move around
a little bit at least on startup so
that's just gonna keep it in the middle
instead of banging against the side of
the hole so yep up with that they ran to
110 volt hots for the 220 and the
neutral and they basically similar to
how they were doing the casing and the
drilling stick by stick twenty foot
lengths they dropped the pump down and
then connected the sticks of PVC to each
other just by threading them a male and
female thread so it's standard I guess
PVC water pipe I don't know if this is
drainage pipe or what PVC is usually
drainage pipe from my experience this
isn't under pressure it's just a pump
pumping up to a tank or another pump I'm
not sure the details on that pipe yeah
so in this case you can do this by hand
but they had a truck with a little crane
on it with a little attachment that has
a collar on it that allowed them to hold
the pipes vertically and there it's how
they're able to thread them on top of
each other and then lower them down
together they went down 180 feet and
that was not an arbitrary number
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look at the screen that tells you how
far down the order is temperature
seventy two point four feet we're going
down
oh I see okay so it's got like some type
of sonar okay cool
so let's take a step back so the whole
depth of the well was 325 feet we hit
water at 300 they went down another 25
feet not exactly sure why I imagine it's
probably because any sediment coming in
from the water veins it has a chance to
to settle down low but below where we
hit water so it never clogs up down
there but again if I'm wrong on that
please correct me so then when we
drilled it the pressure of those veins
push water in and rose that water level
in the well up to 52 feet below the
surface and that's where it leveled off
then at that point you had enough weight
of that water holding back that pressure
so when we take water out and bring the
water level down lower than 52 feet
it'll work its way right back up at
about 10 gallons a minute because that's
the rate of flow coming into the well so
we dropped the pump down to a hundred
eighty feet so that's approximately 126
feet below the level of the water in the
well in the casing there so if you think
about that you got a little bit over one
gallon of water per foot of 6-inch pipe
or 6-inch hole there got about a hundred
twenty-six gallons maybe about a hundred
thirty gallons sitting on top of that
pump now that's all the water that's
ready to be pumped out so yes we have 10
gallons a minute
but we have we can pump out as fast as
we want as fast as that pump will let us
for that first hundred thirty gallons so
very rarely we ever gonna be pumping out
one hundred thirty gallons at a time you
know generally you're pumping into your
home filling up a pressure tank and your
pressure tank is never really more than
like you know 20 30 40 gallons so you
know it's gonna kick on normal in a
normal house situation would kick on
fill up that tank and then kick off
again so it can really just pump as fast
as it once in my case I'm probably not
going to be using this well water as a
primary source it's probably gonna be
backup probably filling up a cistern
when we don't get enough rain I'll
probably just limit the rate of the
water flow and I can I got a vow I got a
adjustable valve here so I can just keep
running it until my sister and is full
without
running out of that hundred thirty
gallons but keep in mind also is that as
you're pumping that stuff out new water
is coming in so you probably actually
have way more than 130 gallons before
you actually run dry get the water level
down that far so the rate of water
coming into my well is around ten
gallons per minute the rate that my pump
can pump water out of the well is also
about ten gallons a minute so if you
think about that as I start depleting
from that hundred twenty hundred thirty
gallon reservoir sitting on top of the
pump the water from from underground is
refilling the well at about the same
rate that the pump is pumping it out so
I can never run out of water
unless water stops coming up from the
ground I can pump out as fast as I want
and it'll just keep refilling as I'm
pumping it out so I could just pump out
ten gallons a minute continuously if I
really want it to okay so once we
lowered the pump down to one hundred
eighty feet the top is capped off with a
cap but also a valve that allows me to
let the water come out or not and I have
an electrical wire coming out the top
that goes over to a circuit breaker so I
could turn the pump on and off and
that's it for now
I'm using that to just fill water tanks
for construction and our camper when we
actually hook this up to the house I'm
gonna dig long down alongside the casing
about six feet and drill a hole on the
side and put what they call a pitless
adapter in the side of the of the casing
and the water is gonna come out of that
adapter and then out pipe underground
below frost line to the house the well
is just gonna have a solid cap and
there's gonna be no access to water out
the top anymore you're gonna just access
the water from the house at that point
well that about wraps up how we did our
well here if you have any information
that I missed or was incorrect about or
just have your own stories about your
wells I'd love to hear them please
comment below and
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I'll see you all next time take care
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you